Defeat – a Thought Provoking Poem by Kahlil Gibran – Read by Shane Morris

Reflect on the sweetness of your defeats as you listen to this poem. 

Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;

You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs, And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.

Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,

Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot, and not to be trapped by withering laurels, and in you I have found aloneness, and the joy of being shunned and scorned.

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield, In your eyes

I have read That to be enthroned is to be enslaved, and to be understood is to be levelled down, and to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness, and like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,

You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences, and none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings, and urging of seas, and of mountains that burn in the night, and you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,

You and I shall laugh together with the storm, And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, And we shall stand in the sun with a will, And we shall be dangerous.

Kahlil Gibran was the key figure in a Romantic movement that transformed Arabic literature in the first half of the twentieth century.